A splendid rant about Trump, Clinton, The American Republic & The Ides Of March

Wolf Howling gave me permission to re-print in its entirety his splendid, insightful, intelligent, informed, far-reaching, and tightly-written rant about everything that’s wrong with the American political system as we head into the 2016 election. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you:

Caesar: Who is it in the press that calls on me? I hear a tongue shriller than all the music cry “Caesar!” Speak, Caesar is turn’d to hear.

Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March.

Caesar: What man is that?

Brutus: A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.

Julius Caesar Act 1, scene 2, 15–19

On the 15th of March, 44 B.C., the Roman Republic signed its death warrant when the Senators conspired to kill Julius Caesar. It was perhaps the most famous political assassination in history. It certainly was an inflection point in world history, marking the demise of the Roman Republic and its degeneration into rule by emperors. Somehow, I think we are seeing a variant on that history play out today on both the left and the right. The election of Trump could well spell the end our Republic. The plot to steal the nomination from him at a contested convention would surely be the end of the Republican Party. And the refusal to indict Hillary would be a de facto end to our nation as a nation of laws existing under the Constitution.

The nation has just suffered through nearly eight years seeing what rule by a progressive left ideologue looks like — a combination of extra-constitutional rule, cronyism, and identity politics reaching to its ludicrous conclusions. We have an economy that is failing a declining middle class and has been propped up — barely and only — by a Fed running the printing presses non-stop and now considering negative interest rates. And Obama will leave the White House in 2017 with America in a much more precarious position in terms of national security — his insane deal to give Iran a glide path to a nuclear arsenal being the suicidal cherry on top.

Much of what the Obama and the progressive left have accomplished has been enabled by a Court system whose progressive members consider themselves a politburo not bound by the Constitution or democracy, by closed public sector unions that pump incredible sums of laundered taxpayer money back into politics on behalf of progressives, an education system that indoctrinates for progressivism, a system of crony capitalism that operates to disadvantage the middle class and crush entrepreneurship, and by a progressive regulatory bureaucracy that operates outside of the Constitution, passing rules – none voted on by Congress yet still with the force of law — that are working fundamental change to our nation.

I will admit to high hopes coming into the 2016 election. If you look hard at most of these issues, you will see that they are systemic problems that can only be solved by affirmative political action. Reining in the court system requires action by Congress, as does ending closed sector public unions and putting the regulatory bureaucracy wholly under Congressional control. And I had high hopes that this year, the pendulum would swing far enough to the right that we could elect a conservative for President who would address these systemic issues. Cruz, I thought and still think, understood all of these issues and would be most likely to address them. That said, we had 17 candidates on the Republican side at the start this year and almost all of them would have made decent presidents, if not as effective as Cruz. Rubio understood the national security picture best of all of them. Fiorina understood the problems with cronyism, regulation and Congressional accounting. Carson was an honorable man whose heart was in the right place. Even the weakest of the lot, Kasich and Bush, could have been expected to govern at least as milquetoast centrists, addressing none of the systemic problems but at least making none of them worse.

Instead we get Donald Trump, a narcissist megalomaniac and snake oil salesman extraordinaire. He is a progressive crony capitalist wearing the coat of a Republican because it suits his needs of the moment. He is Obama’s mirror image in white face. He is the ultimate black swan. I do not expect a Trump, if elected, to address any of the systemic issues facing our nation. Indeed, his understanding of the issues seems about on par with a modern high school student, so what he will do in any particular situation is an unknown though his knee jerk seems to be to the progressive left. Nor do I expect him in any case to be any more of an effective leader than was Schwarzenegger in California or Ventura in Minnesota. Victor Davis Hanson makes the point in a recent article that Trump is, at least, no more debased or worse than any other of the Democrats who have held the Presidency since 1961 and the ascension of JFK. True enough, and 20 years ago I would have broken out the popcorn for a Trump candidacy. But this comes at a time when the progressive left is pushing hard to take a permanent position of dominance and we are in a very precarious position on all fronts. I agree with Thomas Sowell (see here and here) that our nation no longer has the luxury of time to absorb another national leadership / political disaster:

The “Super Tuesday” primaries may be a turning point for America — and quite possibly a turn for the worse. After seven long years of domestic disasters and increasing international dangers, the next President of the United States will need extraordinary wisdom, maturity, depth of knowledge and personal character to rescue America.

Instead, if the polls are an indication, what we may get is someone with the opposite of all these things, a glib egomaniac with a checkered record in business and no track record at all in government — Donald Trump.

If so, the downward trajectory of America over the past seven years may well continue on into the future, to the point of no return. . . .

My fear is not that Trump will be an existential disaster as a President — though I think he would be disaster. My real fear is that he will be ineffective, address none of the systemic problems, and yet be painted as the embodiment of all things conservative by a progressive media. After four years of Trump, I am afraid that it would be the death knell for the conservative movement and assure our national suicide with the ascendancy of the progressive left.

Having said all of that, there are various people talking about denying Trump the nomination at a contested convention. Indeed, Gov. Kasich, with all of a total of I believe it’s 88 or so delegates at the moment, is justifying staying in the race under precisely that scenario. He is living in a dangerous fantasy land.

Perhaps if we arrive in July at a close delegate count without anyone having won the nomination outright with a 50% + 1 delegate count, then a contested convention might be justified. But if Trump is significantly ahead in the delegate count as seems likely and the Republican leadership denies him the nomination, that would be the end for a Republican Party already seen as being completely out of touch with its voting base. Indeed, the rise of Trump can largely be tied to the fact that Republicans in Congress have been completely ineffective in carrying out — or even trying to carry out — the wishes of the voters who elected them to office in wave elections. As much as I see Trump as being very likely the end for the conservative movement, shenanigans by the Republican leadership to deny him the nomination at the convention should he prove the clear favorite would absolutely spell the end for the Republican Party. It truly would be the equivalent of Rome’s political class assassinating Julius Caesar.

A last note on Trump. The progressive left seems to believe that they have the freedom to shut down all speech with which they disagree. They have been able to get away with this most notably on progressive college campuses because the administrations agree with their positions. They are now seeking to export their tactics into society at large and shut down Trump — with grandiose plans for much bigger disruption in the future. They succeeded in Chicago, with Trump cancelling his appearance there because of security concerns. And to the extent that there has been some violence involving protestors at Trump rallies, some have sought to blame Trump for this. That is utter horse manure. Trump is not responsible for progressives who believe that they are entitled to disrupt his speech, nor for the response of Americans who refuse to acquiesce to these progressive tactics. As David French wrote recently inNational Review:

It will be impossible, over the long term, to maintain peace and even national unity if elite media and the Democratic party continue to condone and even encourage political violence and the systematic violation of individual rights by its radical progressive base. From Occupy to Ferguson to Baltimore to the unrest on campus, Americans have watched the liberal establishment trip over itself to express solidarity and sympathy with protesters who’ve burned, looted, shut down roads and parks, and violated the fundamental rights of American citizens.

. . . For the better part of two years, millions of Americans have watched as violence and disruption actually work. At college campuses, radical students and allied professors and administrators will shout down dissenters, intimidate fellow students, disrupt the educational process, and win. In the streets of American cities, protesters will riot, vandalize, block traffic, and invade shops and restaurants, and they win. When the narratives (“Hands up, don’t shoot,” or “It’s open season” on black males) are debunked by facts, protesters still prevail. Police tactics change even as the national murder rate seems set for its largest spike in 25 years. In the nation’s 50 largest cities, 770 more people were murdered in 2015 than in the previous year. Yet with the exception of a few courageous progressives, the Left largely hails this unrest. Even riots are excused or minimized by leading figures in the liberal intelligentsia, and mob actions that violate the free-speech rights of fellow citizens — by shouting down or shutting down events the Left doesn’t like — are whitewashed as “peaceful protest.” . . .

To try to paint violence at Trump rallies as Trump’s fault is one hundred eighty degrees of wrong. One of two things must happen. Either the police must act to arrest these individuals and they be held accountable under the law or they need, in fact to be subject to real violence. The nonviolence of Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. only worked because they were appealing to a moral people on the other side. There is no morality on the progressive left beyond a desire for power and control. If they are to be given free rein to act without legal consequence, than they must be made to pay a physical consequence. That or we must bow down to progressives who are willing to use quasi-violent tactics to achieve their goals. It is as simple as that.

And that is the perfect lead-in to the other layer in this crap sandwich, Hildabeast, the likely nominee of the left. This is a woman who should be indicted and facing a lifetime in jail for her utter disregard of our national security. I have held a security clearance. I have worked with classified material. I am quite familiar with the need to safeguard such material, the lengths to which all people who hold such clearances are required to go, and the seriousness with which it is treated. This is an issue that transcends politics. Those on the left who are willing to give her a pass on this are both an utter disgrace and traitors to our Constitutional system, predicated as it is on the foundation that no one is above the law.

There is enough information in the public domain now to say categorically that Hillary Clinton has violated multiple laws regarding the handling of classified materials and should be facing indictment. ANYONE else who had done what she has done would be, at best, out on bail and awaiting trial. That the FBI appears to be slow walking this investigation at the moment is doing a tremendous disservice to our nation. That the media is letting her off the hook by allowing her to continue to make the claim that, because the information on her server was not marked classified, that has the slightest thing to do with her criminal negligence is doing a tremendous disservice to our nation. If she is not indicted, then we are no longer a nation of laws and it is time for blood in the streets.

This year should have been an inflection point spelling the end of the progressive toxins built into our system of government over the past century. Instead, we are reliving 44 BC, when the Republic hung in the balance and Rome went down the path to its dissolution. God help us and our nation.

Battle for Spain, Beevor: http://tinyurl.com/gq5pgyk
It is all in there.
Eventually the collective sense of humor ran thin and then BOOM!

A very telling quote is at the beginning of the book. A bus driver watches an attractive young woman smartly dressed in the latest haute couture board his bus. Instead of a normal look of admiration was a look of pure hatred. The writer realised that once class war outweighed hormones, civil war was inevitable.

Tonestaple

This morning I read that Trump has said that if he doesn’t get the Republican nomination, there will be riots. I’m sure he phrased it in some fashion to make himself appear uninvolved, just a man making an observation, but to me it sounded like marching orders. “Horrified” does not even begin to describe my state of mind.

SCOTTtheBADGER

That is what it sounded like to me, as well. Trump making a threat.

Hans Van Trump

You didn’t read it right – he was merely hypothesizing and, I think, correctly. If the GOPe steal the nomination from him at a contested convention you can be sure there will be riots if not worse. That isn’t incitement, it’s common sense.

ymarsakar

Sharpton tends to hypothesize that as well. Funny how the riots happen when they don’t get their extortion cash on time. People have even been killed, but Sharpton says that’s not his problem .It never is.

But it isn’t merely the former Democrats in Trump’s camp that knows how to use political, verbal, and physical violence. The rest of America has merely kept their safeties on because they believed in the Republic and elections. Kill that off, and you might be surprised at what kind of blowback happens for former Democrats, current Democrats, and Leftists in general.

Generally Revolutions begin purging their own due to internal power disputes (and we have more than 3 factions in this nation), and this time there is no George Washington to prevent it.

“Hildabeast…”
Who knew that the “Pussy Pass” would extend to such levels of “administration”.
Oh, wait. Germany, The Fed (depending on ones economics heroes), The IRS…

ymarsakar

Those Americans woke up too late, as I’ve mentioned before.

Their Republic is already dead and gone. Now all they have to do is to accept it, reconcile with it, or take vengeance for it.

The time of talk and elections solving things, has long since passed. Even in 2007, I felt the hand of fate on that path.

MDR

Cruz supporters don’t know how stupid they sound to Trump supporters. No disrespect, I’m just being honest here. Why do they seem they stupid? First, because they believe that by acting within the system, with an honorable president (Cruz) they can achieve the desired result (return to the Constitution). Trump supporters know that the left has corrupted the system, and that you have to go OUTSIDE the system to fix it. Second, Cruz supporters believe Trump is stupid. Trump supporters know that Trump is a master in strategy and tactics, and that Cruz supporters are like little babies who have never thought about strategy a day in their life. They wouldn’t recognize a strategic move if it hit them in the head.

So we have different opinions. Is that reason to call eachother stupid? Well, yes. Because Trump supporters know why Cruz supporters like Cruz. Constitutionalist, smart, honorable guy etc. But Cruz supporters don’t have a clue why Trump supporters like Trump. That makes you stupid. Sorry but it’s true. No disrespect.

I have to say, MDR, it’s precisely the same looking the other way. Trump has been a lifelong, big government, Democrat-funding, very sleazy human being, and I’m suddenly supposed to believe he’s the conservative savior?

MDR

I don’t view Trump as the conservative savior. But I do believe that Conservatism has allready lost the war. The left has won. Conservatism is something for old white people. And with our open borders these old white people will be a minority soon. So that’s the appeal of Trump. He’s a nationalist. He’s a fighter. And he hates the international left.

And when you say that he’s supported Democrat causes, my reply is: for a Democrat it would be physically impossible to say the words: take the oil. So he’s definitely not a Democrat. So why keep saying it??

ymarsakar

Your personal savior, at least, if not a party’s savior. That was your tone back when you first started talking about stalking Book and what not.

Leftists are hypocrites first and foremost. They have taken more corrupt deals from the military industrial complex and Saudi oil than the totality of their accusations combined. In fact, much of the corruption that does exist in oil and what not, comes from Leftists and their business cronies.

Hans Van Trump

None of us view Trump as a conservative savior. Conservatism is as dead as the Constitution unfortunately.

ymarsakar

That’s what they said about peace in Iraq in 2005, before they had to eat their words in 2006 and then engineer a Hussein AQ backed resurgence.

Is that what you people plan then, since any rebel conservatives must be stamped out if your line is to be believed. The cuckservatives are easily killed off due to their very nature and weakness. The patriotic survivalists who you group together with conservatives and cuckservatives, will not go down as easily as Trump bulldozes buildings he doesn’t like using the Federal Law of Power Dominant. There’s a lot more powers on this Earth than just the Feds and the IRS abc bureaucracy.

Hans Van Trump

Not sure where you’re coming from. I don’t recall talking about killing anyone off, conservative or otherwise. From an effective political movement, however, conservatism is very much dead. As a political document used to guide lawmaking, the Constitution is also very much dead. Anything beyond that is your own inference, not mine.

ymarsakar

When you declare the Constitution is dead, that allows anyone to kill anyone. Because all that stood in the way, is gone. What are you going to replace it with and how many are you going to kill to do it?

Now look whose too afraid to talk about the serious problems like immigration and being tough on the Left.

Of course people probably think putting their own Tyrant on the Throne of America will make all the now dead conservative political factions Obey the new Authority, even with the death of the US Constitution. Doesn’t work that way in human history.

Hans Van Trump

Wow, you are really far out in cuckooland. The Constitution’s irrelevance does not in any way change our criminal code, the vast majority of which resides at the state level. As a document that guides our federal lawmaking, the Constitution is totally dead. That doesn’t mean you can ignore the millions upon millions of federal laws and regulations (most of which aren’t even constitutional), let alone state criminal law. Wow, just wow.

ymarsakar

Hah. And that shows just how much you know, Trump. All the authority that those criminals laws are based upon, comes from the Constitutional compact. Something people like you, had no clue about. You think it was some kind of militia or powerful lawyer cabal making sure it was enforced. How fitting for a bunch of uneducated masses following their next Hussein Messiah clone.

50 (57 according to Hussein) sovereign nations will have all kinds of border shootings incidents, even more than the proposed wall between Mexico and the US would stop.

Hans Van Trump

Uh, no it doesn’t. I’m a magna cum laude law graduate, thank you very much. I’ve forgotten more about con law than you will ever know. It’s pretty obvious you’ve never argued a case in federal court. Keep clinging to that Constitution and let me know how many cases you win. Thank you for playing.

ymarsakar

The law has no say in war, however, except what the lawyers in the chain of command can force through in orders and obedience.

The federal court won’t matter either. Without the US Constitution providing the Authority for your laws, the Founding Father’s war of independence will look like a picnic compared to what Trump and Trump has to deal with. Some savior and his pack of supporters, have no idea what’s really going on in this country, as usual.

Of course I’m not singling out Trump, the rest of the country is no better.

Hans Van Trump

I never said this would end well. I’m just pointing out that looking to the Constitution when 99% of the political and legal class no longer consider themselves bound by it is a fool’s game. Cruz has to realize this, which is why I wonder why he spends so much time harping on it when he knows that he has zero chance of any constitutional argument actually working.

ymarsakar

It would make a great justification for civil war, for later on, irregardless of who wins. With the Founding Fathers, they tried all avenues of diplomatic engagement with GB about representation and other issues like taxation. Only when it became apparent that GB didn’t even care about their own common laws and traditions, treating the 13 colonies like an income source and property, that it got easier convincing the average colonial.

DC already violates the US Constitution, undermining their own authority. Once the people are also guilty of this, there’s no reason for any of the 1000 rebel factions in the US to hold back. It will have become apparent how things stand, for everyone.

During Iraq and the WMD argument, people claimed that war needed to be the last resort. Well, some people still want to try all other ways before then.

MichaelAdams

No, it was not impossible for Democrats to say, “Take the oil.” They did say it, before we invaded Iraq, imputed those words to Republicans and then denounced the idea that oil tribute would pay for the war as another Republican lie. These layers of lies are all too familiar to people who were grownups all this century. The layers are also quite bothersome to us when we hear them from (currently) not Democrats. Democrats are imperialists, Republicans are traders. It has been ever thus.

ymarsakar

More American blood has been shed under Democrat warmongers than Republicans. People tend to forget that.

Hans Van Trump

I think you’re overstating the “disaster” of a Trump Presidency by several orders of magnitude. Certainly nowhere near “Fall of the Republic” levels. We’re in the fast lane to that regardless of who’s President at this point. There are FAR too many people who benefit from the status quo, so attempting to fix things constitutionally is a fool’s errand. We’re at the point predicted by Alexander Tyler that democracies end once the populace realizes they can vote themselves treasure from the public largesse. In our case it’s simply being accelerated by a massive influx of (soon to be voting) illegals.